The sites a joke for reasons other than this user has chimed-in without understanding the jyst of 'reading anything before purchasing:' Here's a short list:

Hypocrisy/Double standards: Popularity fuels status through brown-nosing and robotic insincerity garners votes rather than content quality prompting the same.

Most people are afraid to cast a down-vote for content rather, they do it when they don't 'like' someone. Petty, pussified, and worthlessly dishonest.

Others, users with nothing better to do than to single out another for divisive abuse when his/her opinion or message doesn't jibe with their cloistered or developmentally-disabled world view, push the envelope with sophomoric rambling or graffiti in the form of retarded commentary on profiles or blatant rule-breaking while admins turn a lazy blind,or otherwise complicate eye....Seek professional help or leave the house every once in a while....Works wonders, kids.

Cocksuckers-by-choice, continue to bring the overall quality of the site down with inane ink-well-dipping and hair-pulling or other wise goading for example, Christians, those with conservative-leaning sensibilities, or constructive-critics, enough so that they stop contributing altogether, lurk, or disappear.

From time-to-time, it has been the job of the strongest-willed and long-suffering,to gently guide these users up the pathway upwards and into their own asses rather than enjoy the place and make whoopee with great content....

Yeah mygamesarefun, don't care if you joined by mistake or were simply dull, there is indeed an air of douche here that's entrenched which continually befouls the collective spirit of community.


Won't name names on my list, cocksuckers-by-choice have mirrors on walls in their funk-caves, down the hall from their game-controllers and pizza-stained and blistered microwaves, as well as the lavatories at their shit jobs or in their fucking mother's basement....Any doubts? Just look at the banter above and save your fucking money.

Oh and.....Have a NICE day.

(cue comment down-votes, and fuck-off.)


Some of the most egregious of violators are sure to chime-in on this thread, stay tuned for more guano, coming-up next.

Gotta love Krugman.. not as an economist but as a world class hypocrite rivaling Molière's Tartuffe. He's getting paid $25,000 a month to do zero work, while calling for the end of income inequality. <scoff> I wonder if he's ready to give up 70% of that to the federal government like he says all "wealthy" ought to do.

The headline might as well read, "Rich economist constantly holds forth on the evils of income inequality, while...." You get the point. Here's the back-of-the-envelope math on his recent windfall:

Not counting the $20,000 in non-transferable travel budget, moving bennies, etc. that they offered him, CUNY is paying Dr. Krugman a nine-month salary of $225,000. I presume he won't be working summer semesters, so let's say that's all his salary from CUNY for the year. Now normal tenured senior professors at CUNY make at most $116,364 a year. Adjuncts at CUNY make about $3,000 or so per course; you can teach at most 9 hours a semester. So let's say you're an adjunct maxed out at a 3/3 load; you make about $18,000 a year for that. So if Dr. Krugman wanted, he could pick out 6 adjuncts at CUNY and *double* their yearly income, just by giving away the amount of money he personally makes *over and above what the best-paid senior faculty make*. If he were willing to do the job (*) for a nominal fee (as you may know, Prof. Krugman has another line of work), he could literally pick some lucky adjunct at CUNY and double their entire year's income -- *every month of the year.

And honestly, @radx, what did the "progressives" expect would happen? This so-called "Democracy" can never be anything other than an "oligarchy," if not a governance by "mob rule" (and sometimes a combination of the two). If "Democracy" is the "least bad" kind of state/government possible as some (like Mark Twain) have claimed, then it's high time "the people" climbed out of the dark ages and lived without rulers, altogether.

The resultant "chaos" that would ensue would not be any worse (and in fact far better) than the kind of unintended chaos that results from the centralized power structures of state governance.

------

*Which, let's be clear, involves no teaching load, and seems to mainly mean that maybe he'll drop by the office every few months to share his brilliance with whoever happens to be there. The point for CUNY is almost certainly to purchase some of the aura from his name on the letterhead

why does everybody get their panties in a bunch when someone offers an alternative to dealing with cancers?

cancer treatment is NOT a black and white issue.
a change in diet as @Sniper007 suggested has been proven more and more to not only combat certain cancers but eliminate them altogether.

of course this course of treatment is a multi pronged attack and really only works in early diagnosis stages.
cannabinoid research over the past decade shows serious promise in reducing risks of cancer and reduction in overall cancer cell production in the body.

since many people here in the states do not have comprehensive,preventative health insurance the cancer is discovered far too late for some of what @Sniper007 is suggesting.

so chemotherapy is a last option.
and for those who do not understand why some here are calling chemotherapy "barbaric",let me clarify:

it is a controlled poisoning.
aaaaaaaand they are OFF!
who will die first?
is it the tumor or the body?

early diagnosis is the key but even in the latter stages cannabis can help eleviate pain and discomfort,as @Shepppard pointed out.

OMFG!!!Wow... I guess I have to answer that.
Why do you continue to refer to the utopian free market that you admit never existed, you can't possibly know how it would turn out since you have nothing to reference, so please stop acting like you "know" how it would be, that's simply making your politics a religion, with no need to explain and no basis for your argument but supposition.
If only more people would vote FOR a candidate instead of out of fear of the "other" candidate, my political "regulation" would work great. I can't control others, only try to explain my position and hope they agree.
I am quite happy where I am, but I also know other places are not as nice. I feel it's mostly due to overpopulation/high population density, but that's another subject altogether.
I'm sorry your experience with police is so one sided...I do wish it were not so. I think blaming them for an accident during a car chase may be a little unfair, not knowing the details I'll reserve judgment. I would hope you were properly compensated if it's as you suggest. My experiences have been both unpleasant and helpful, but I could understand the position of the one's that were unhelpful, even if I disagreed completely. My wish is that others would understand that, on average, having police is far better than not (even when they end up not always helping YOU), without needing personal NEED for the police to understand...I'm including you in that wish.
You would lose that bet...I'm a landlord.
I'm disabled and don't take a dime in public assistance, but pay my fair share for having roads and water systems (and then some) because it's a good thing to have them for everyone. I could find ways to pay less taxes, or fight for them with my vote...I just see that as shirking a duty owed to one's fellow citizens, so I don't. No man is an island.
So, no $35 real security exists that you'll show us? Can't imagine why that would be. No evidence, no existence.
By your logic, taxes are voluntary, you can choose not to live in the US and you don't get thrown in jail for not paying them. (most HOA's have a clause where they can take your home if you don't pay).
Again, you claim you don't care about my thoughts, but you continue to prove you do by responding.....you do see that, right? I don't claim to not care about your position, I try to not simply ignore those I disagree with as that tends to end intellectual evolution on both sides. Sometimes it's a futile effort.....
Again, because I don't want to disband the government doesn't mean I (or others) LIKE it, but we do have control, we simply need to assert it in thoughtful ways, not react out of fear of the possible future. That's my viewpoint anyway.

Couldn't agree more.

In the past, there was some justification from an educational point of view where most people could never see these animals in the wild. These days we have David Attenborough (and if anyone argues that seeing wild animals in person in a zoo enclosure is better than seeing them in their natural environment on tv, I will pimp slap them).

I also accept that there are some species that are so endangered that zoos provide a useful breeding program, but ultimately the goal should be to do away with zoos altogether.

Mass Effect 3 sucks for an entirely different non gay reason. It nearly ruined the trilogy, it has not just a shit ending but a shit story altogether. Even the losers trying to save it by coming up with the indoctrination theory are grasping at stupid straws which the writers even pointed out.

It's like when people were trying to convince others that fucking Promethius wasn't confusing and didn't suck. It was confusing, hence peoples confusion, and it did suck because confusing movies fucking suck.

> "[Austerity] frees up resources for private investment" is a statement that
> does not match my perception of reality"

Well, far be it from me to try to introduce you to some basic epistemologies to which you may not be familiar: like rationalism, deduction, etc, in order to move you away from "authority" as the only path to knowledge you seem to use. Unfortunately, however, this "authority" method is inappropriate to the study of economics.

> "So, demand vs supply... we all know that discussion won't be resolved here,
> ever."

Keynes and Hayek were at it for a while. It's all in the two hip-hop videos.

> "It's utterly pointless."

Yes. There is nothing new not covered by Keynes vs. Hayek.

> "Shamelessness was my addition, my interpretation. "

Bad thymology (my interpretation).

> "He "weakens" society, economically, by suppressing aggregate demand.
> The more wealth you accumulate, the less of it, as a percentage, translates
> into demand."

I see. So, by this logic, any making of money is, in itself, a "weakening" of society. Unless I'm a socialist, like David Simon, then I cannot make money without also "weakening" society.

> "But since you apparently share the views of Hollenbeck, all of that was
> probably hogwash to you."

Yes, at best hogwash. Alas, I've no interest in going into this with you, especially since you've no have interest in actually looking at it. Had you any interest at all -- or studied the subject beyond deferring to the "authority" method of epistemology -- you could at least provide me with a concise explanation as to why you think the Austrian/Misean economic position falters. Rather than thinking for yourself, however, you dismiss it as "wrong," "right-wing," or "pointless" to debate or go into. "Here Be Monsters, period."

The Keynes/Hayek debates have the similar tones, with Keynes simply ignoring all of Hayek's points, evasions, and going off into something else. You clearly agree with the Keynesian approach/theory, which likely means you cannot really explain anything except through unfounded claims, that are "pointless" to argue, debate, or rationally defend.

As I have said before, one cannot have this sort of intellectual relationship with those either unwilling or unable to grasp basic economic principles, like for example those clearly explained by Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson." There's simply no common language through which to communicate. Confronted with these kinds of beliefs, one can either try to educate (but only those who ask for it, since attempting to educate those who do not want to be educated will likely fail, as any public school teacher can tell you) or one can pull out the snake oil and the cash register. The third option involves ignoring such ignorance altogether, and use what one knows for one's own financial and life benefit in ways that don't involve such people in the first place.

There are so many errors in the Keynesian 'demand' theory of economics (you can find much on that if you want to read up on it), but Keynesians tend to avoid any real debates. You're coming from the Keynesian fallacy of saving money as being bad for the economy (because spending it all/consumerism is supposedly what gets the economy going). And the even more absurd fallacy which presupposes (with no proof of it at all) that rich people keep most of their wealth stored somewhere outside of circulation. When in reality, rich people only save some and the richer they are the more they spend/invest. Of course, when the economy seem fragile, due to central banks meddling, bubbles, etc., investors get nervous and don't invest as much a they otherwise would. When they don't invest, it shrinks supply of things people would want to spend on. Demand does nothing, it doesn't exist, if there is nothing to supply that people want to buy.

In fact, I am starting to think that central bankers are not really Keynesian at all, in the sense that they don't really believe their own bullshit. They know better but also know how to exploit their positions as central bankers, making folks like @radx buy into it, the snake oil. For example, he may not care for gold, but bankers do. Whatever they say against it, folks will still buy it, both for themselves and the banks they run. And as @radx rightly says, he's a human. And apparently he can sell his 'charm' if push comes to shove.

Try as I may, I just don't care about wealth inequality. I care about poverty, but I really don't care about how much money a rich person has. And I may care about government redistributing money one way or the other (usually from the bottom up), but about "inequality," per se, I really don't care.

Praxeology shows you what a just environment for the maximum wealth of a society should look like. Thymology shows you why inevitably some people will make more money than others in a fair playing field. When inequality results not so much from thymological differences but from praxeological distortions, then you should suspect foul play.

Too often, anti-inequality folks ignore thymological differences while trying to distort/impose praxeological laws to force compliance, a recipe for certain failure.
Still, much of the world has been coming out of poverty, a testament to the power of commerce and its ability to bypass governments altogether.

So that's everyone in the world except......Iceland. I quite literally live a 30 minute drive from Greenwich but for half the year I'm not in it's timezone.

The astrophysicists need to be able to reliably predict when leap seconds will be needed and then the world switch to a UTC which is on a four week cycle with no leap year bullcrap.

Edit in fact I'd ditch the whole hour minute thing altogether and mark each day as a percantage. That would negate the UTC weirdness and instead of going to work 9-5 you'd go 37.5 - 70.8 or in utc for new york (gmt-4 currently) 20.8 - 54.1

It's commonplace nowadays for Twitter, Facebook, etc. to also report your geographic location (latitude and longitude) along with the post so you can share with "your friends" where you were when you posted. Of course, you can disable sharing your location and also limit who sees your posts altogether, but it's becoming more and more common, especially for younger people, to be so unconcerned about sharing their posts and physical location with the world.

Actually I have an even better suggestion heard from a friend today ~ Start your own debt collection agency, (easily done actually) Buy the debts from the credit collection agencies (subsidized by crowdfunding and philanthropy) and then discharge the debt altogether. I have heard this is already happening and people are breaking down in tears when they are being called on the phone and told their debt has been absolved.
Bill Bartmann may be a good guy but his company is still collecting money from people who are struggling whichever way you slice it.

May we suggest the most glaring (common sense with a view trumping the most gracious of mortality odds) 'security flaw' inherent in ANY similar device (including off-brand/hype models) with functionality requiring two thumbs, a pair of eyes, and a challenge to their users of navigating the useless shit whilst performing mundane tasks such as saaay, crossing a street, waiting in line for groceries, operating a motor vehicle much less, operating your legs while not looking at the GROUND? Who needs any of this engineered obsolescence garbage anyway?...The cunts who want you under their thumbs, that's who and if they are LUCKY(all indications point to this a inevitable)-you or someone you just texted die crossing a street using some ineffectual device, car wreck while the manufacturer staffs lobbyists while crunching quarterly loss numbers.

Incorporating distraction into large populations who can afford these ancillary toys is KEY to these cunts who compete to make available these consumer grey-matter-killers and it has been the goal of providing you with the convenience of your own self-importance and slow death from the OUTSET.

Use less of the shit (civil and economic disobedience), stop fawning-over it and selling it without compensation to your friends (because after all, you have nothing else to communicate about of substance or meaning since yer skills have fallen-off a bit after the in-crowd hi-jack feeds on trashing or band-wagoning the latest devices every week..(gotta have one gotgaotta have the best)) HINT: THEY ALL HOBBLE YOUR MIND, THEY ALL SUCK-

EVERYONE do the experiment collectively (don't use their services for a month and threaten to drop service altogether) and YO, maybe develop some lasting relationships along the way....remember "eye contact!?"

Watch how miraculously interesting, stress-free and simply satisfying your unnecessarily complicated, dull-fucking life changes overnight and adds 10 more quality years to it when you numb or otherwise mitigate your use of this and all tech connected by satellite or cable. Ssuddenly, the emperor has no billy-club, a birthday suit, and the obvious becomes clear:..He's a FUCK THAT CONTROLS YOU WHO SHOULD BE ON AN INTERNATIONAL SEX-OFFENDERS DATABASE.

To my eye, it seems like YouTube has been actively trying to piss users off with shit like this for a while now. I don't have enough of a tinfoil hat on to actually think that is true, but it sure seems like it.

This guy hit a lot of the issues, but here's my rundown of annoyances:
* I've used GMail forever. In the past year, Google decided that means that I want their services for everything. YouTube, Google+, etc. etc. No, I don't.

* GMail inbox now has handy-dandy tabs that separate my email into "Primary" (the one I actually want), "Social" (can I rename this 'trash'?), and "Promotions" (kill it with fire). I don't want that crap, other than as a filter that immediately trashes it and marks as spam.

* YouTube embeds used to not show annotations by default. Which was nice, because annotations suck. Now, the embed player seems to decide that you want them all the time, unless you want to sign in and go through a 19-step process to disable them.

* Caching and streaming used to work. I don't have a massively fast connection, and I live on the opposite side of the earth which gives me high latency. BUT, my connection is fast enough that I used to be able to pick out videos that I really want to watch in high quality, set to 1080p, pause, and let it cache for a few minutes. With that head start, I could probably play the video the whole way through. Now, if I pause, the player decides that I really want it to shittily try to transition down to a lower quality, which frequently garbles the whole video stream for a moderate duration and occasionally crashes it altogether. Thanks for that!


Plenty more issues, but I guess I'll stop there. Basically, all that Google/YouTube have accomplished is to encourage me to put on Adblock Plus, Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper (hide the entire f*&$ing comments section, nag-bars, etc. -- highly recommended), and Flash Video Downloader. That last one lets me simply download videos, at any quality available, so I can watch at my leisure.

Of course, YouTube is in a constant arms race with all those downloader plugins, so they periodically break for a day or so while they are updated to circumvent the YT blocks. But generally, they work well and let me download material to use when teaching classes here in rooms with no net connection.

altogether evil, eh? Wished Ida down-voted now...and the meats' lost in translation
*trigger-happy

Oops! I posted to the wrong profile. Sorry about that! Glad we were able to continue our dialogue.

My comments/responses interspersed:

> "economics has never been my strong suit."

I know, my friend, I know. As soon as I hear some defense of "socialism," I know.

> "but i AM quite literate in history and government and of
> course politics."

Yes, my dear friend, but history is tied to economics, and these days, unfortunately, politics too.

> "while you are correct that a socialist state can become a
> fascist one,so too can a democracy."

Again, we agree! Yes, in fact, fascism is the offspring of democracy. And while not strictly a fascist, was not Hitler elected?
Is there here some assumption that I regard "Democracy" as some sort of "holy cow?" On the contrary, "democracy" is a type of "soft" socialism.
At least as practiced and typically defined.
Not market democracy, however, which is the same as the free market, and not problematic. But pandering political democracy is something else.

> "it is really the forces of ideology"

Yes, in fact the book I am now reading makes this point throughout. So did Mises. But I will say that Mises was not altogether correct in dismissing Marx' assertion that systems and structures influence ideology and not the other way around. Mises was mostly correct, ideology creates systems and structures and institutions, but Marx was a little bit correct, there is also some influence in the other direction.

> "i do apologize for my oftentimes rambling.maybe because i
> am a little out of my comfort zone when it comes to
> economics"

Do not worry my friend, this is the case with most people who have strong political/economic opinions. It has been called afterall the "dismal science." If people knew about economics, we'd have a totally different system of government or no government at all.

> "your last post really cleared so many misconceptions i was
> having during this conversation."

Glad to hear. Some of my other "debaters" get very little out of our debate so it is a refreshing situation.

> "i knew we were more in agreement than disagreement.
> and we are."

I think most people are actually in agreement about goals, they just disagree about means, mostly because of lack of economic education. But once that is cleared, the agreements become more evident.

> "the banks need to held accountable."

1. yes banks need to be held accountable for fraud, like any other business or person.

> "which by inference means the governments role should be
> as fraud detector and protector of the consumer."

2. if you still want a government, meaning you still want a monopolist to do this. But a monopoly is inefficient (this is one of those "economics" laws, but one I think is almost self-evident). So asking a monopoly run by kleptocrats to do this is like asking the wolves to look over the sheep.

> "you didnt mention it but i hope you agree the corporate
> charter needs to be rewritten in a way where they are NOT a
> person and therefore shall be removed from the political
> landscape."

3. Since I don't think government (monopolist) are necessary, I don't think it should be inventing legal entities and forcing those on everyone else. Corporations are the creation of the state. Without a state monopoly, they would look much different than they do at present. In actuality, regardless of legal definitions, a corporation is a group of persons, like a union or social club or a partnership.

> "this will (or should) re-balance our political system (which is
> diseased at the moment)."

4. Corporations are a symptom, not the cause of all our social ills. Lack of economic calculation is much more problematic on all levels. In short, government is not a solution, but the major contributor to the problem. And we still have not gone into the whole issue of how the government is not "we" or "the people" in any meaningful way and how having coercive rulers is a problem.

> "which will return this country to a more level playing field and
> equate to=more liberty."

5. I don't know that we agree here. Corporations are not the cause of lack of liberties. Government is. Corporations won't throw you in jail for not obeying the rulers; government will. Corporations will not garnish your wages. Government will.

> "this will open innovation,progress and advancements in ALL
> fields AND due to competitive forces ,will lower prices."

6. Things like getting rid of IP laws will do so. So will getting rid of most/all taxation and arbitrary regulation.

> "how am i doing so far?"

Doing great!

> "what is governments role"?

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
I don't want government to do anything for me, and I don't want it to force me at gunpoint to do anything at all.
A monopoly cannot do anything good that a free competitive market cannot do better.

> "the anarchist finds it perfectly acceptable to tear down that
> government to build a new one."

If you want someone to rule over you by force, you are not an anarchist. What kind of government would you consider "anarchy?"

> "if something aint working the way it was meant to,get rid of
> it and try another."

What if I don't want you or anyone else imposing rulers on me? What if I believe I have a right to self-ownership and voluntary interactions and property?
What if I don't want your form of "government?' Then what? You still want to impose it on me?
I thought you were my friend.

> "well in an unrestricted market and pesky government out of
> the way what do YOU think is going to happen to a system
> driven by self interest and profit?"

Everything will improve. But government had to be totally out of the way. btw, where do you get that government is not driven itself by self-interest and profit?

> "and i am ok with that."

Well, the difference between what you want and what I want is that what I want is not to be imposed on you but what you want is to be forcefully imposed on me, violently too, if I don't comply.

> "illegal to have an employee owned business."

Like I said, government is a problem.

> "i dont know why it was illegal in this area and i dont see how
> employee owned companies would threaten a free market."

In a free market anyone can own any business they want or else it is not a free market.

> "but as you figured out.
> economics is not my strong suit."

Just because there is a law prohibiting co-op ownership of a bar, it does not mean that it is there for some reason that makes economic sense. It actually makes no economic sense so it must be there for some political reason or because someone somewhere profits from this restriction, as is always the case with regulations.

> "and my man,cant tell ya how grateful i am to have had this
> conversation with you.i learned tons,about you and your
> views and even some about free markets."

Remember, a free market means free, not "semi" free. Not privilege for some, like regulations tend to do.
Always a pleasure.